My writing class is going well.

I am becoming more comfortable in the class, and feel confident that I can actually write. I have my doubts sometimes! Part of being a writer is having days when one feels inspired, and other days when it seems impossible to string words together in a coherent sentence. This week we had to write a personal essay. Unlike the boring essays of high school and university, this one was actually fun to write. The fun part of creative writing is the fact that there are relatively few rules to follow. No APA format, no outlines, no opening argument followed by 3 points of interest to be discussed, analyzed and defended within the body of the essay, all wrapped up in a final paragraph. Rigid, boring stuff.

The guidelines for our essay? Start with an observation, a question, an incident. Expand, develop and explore this to the moment of realization, and tell the story. Include imagery and language that will engage and intrigue.

Here's what I wrote:





The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines humor as the mental faculty of discovering, expressing or appreciating the ludicrous or absurdly incongruous. I like to call it the sense of ‘ha ha’. Either you have it or you don’t. My father and I share the same sense of ‘ha ha’, sometimes to the complete chagrin of my mother. While I am quite sure that some appreciation of humor is learned, some of it must be innate and in our family, genetically preprogrammed.

At family dinners, my mom is often heard saying “Stop that!” when she sees my dad catch my eye as the two of us dissolve into uncontrollable laughter in front of her. We don’t even have to point out the absurdity of a situation, news article or conversation; we give each other a look, and the understanding is there. Not everyone ‘gets’ our sense of ‘ha ha’. There are times our explanations of the absurd result in blank stares from those we are explaining to. We don’t hold it against them, we just note their lack of ‘ha ha’ and move on.

As a child and a young adult, I always thought this appreciation of the absurd was a trait only my father and I shared. That is, until I spent a Christmas holiday with my dad’s brother Barry. The holiday week was spent in Victoria with my elderly grandmother, my Uncle Barry and his wife Faye, Faye’s mother Jean, and Jean’s second husband Roy. Prior to this holiday, I had not met Roy, but my father had. My father’s impression of Roy included two observations. First - Roy moved very slowly. (On a previous Christmas holiday visit, Roy took so long to walk down the block that a neighbor became concerned, and brought him a cup of tea so he would stay warm.) Second - Roy wore an old, tatty, ill-fitting wig. Not a toupee; this was not a flap of faux hair secured with double sided tape. It was a full blown wig. My father also gave me what seemed to be an odd piece of advice. “Whatever you do, don’t look at Uncle Barry during dinner.”

It wasn’t until our first formal sit down meal, that I realized how sage my father’s advice had been. You see, Roy’s wig was the proverbial elephant in the room. We all knew it was there. No one was fooled into thinking it was anything other than an unfortunate attempt to disguise a hairline that had not been present in decades. We did not however, discuss the wig or further acknowledge it in any way.

After attending the Christmas Eve church service, we assembled for a late dinner. Gathered around the table, we raised our heads after saying grace. And then it happened. It slipped. It was now askew. Not heeding my father’s advice, I looked at my Uncle Barry. Who looked at the wig, and then looked at me, eyes twinkling. Shaking with suppressed laughter, I am fairly sure I snorted into my wine glass as I desperately tried to cover my face, not wanting to explain what was so funny or why I was laughing. Roy, methodically buttering his bread, sensing that something was up, slowly looked around the table, last looking at Jean who discreetly pointed her chin in the direction of the errant headgear. Roy stopped buttering, set down the knife and bread, paused for a moment, and then carefully moved his hands up to give the back of his wig a purposeful tug. Then he resumed the slow task of covering every inch of his slice of bread with the aforementioned butter. This time, remembering my dad’s advice, I did not look at my uncle. I spent the rest of the meal in conversation with my grandmother and Faye, turned away from Roy and Jean, and avoiding eye contact with Barry, for fear I would start laughing hysterically and have to explain myself. For subsequent dinners, I made sure that I was sitting out of Barry’s sightline, and never across from Roy. The temptation would be too great.

That evening I realized that like my father and I, my uncle and I shared the same appreciation of the absurd, and that it was like speaking the same language. We had the same sense of ‘ha ha’.